Communication Breakdown
by Stormcrown201
Summary: In which the consequences of Liara giving Shepard's body to Cerberus run deep, Shepard takes her to task for her selfishness, and the fact that she didn't bother to tell anyone about what she had done does not go overlooked.


Nyxeris' desk was empty when Adrian, Garrus, and Tali ascended the steps to Liara's office. Adrian spared it a momentary glance, knowing instinctively what must have happened to its former occupant and thinking that it seemed as if Liara was not inclined towards mercy these days. It was somewhat concerning, but given the nature of the planet they were on and how much time had passed, he was prepared to let it go.

He pressed the buzzer and waited to be called in. As soon as he heard Liara's voice and the door opened, he stepped towards and through the doorway, Garrus and Tali following just behind. The moment he entered, Adrian's gaze was drawn to a small, purplish bloodstain on the wall to his left, further confirmation of what had happened. He wondered how Liara had disposed of Nyxeris' body without being seen, then decided it was better for him not to know.

"Nyxeris had some interesting data hidden away," Liara said without preamble as she approached him. "Thank you, Shepard. I wouldn't have caught her without you. I'm one step closer to the Shadow Broker, thanks to you. Here." At this moment, Liara pulled out her omnitool and pressed a few buttons. "Nyxeris was very well-compensated. You need it more than I do." Adrian glanced down at his own omnitool and saw the notification of a credit transfer appear; he dismissed it as he sat down. Garrus and Tali took seats just behind him.

"What's the next step in your hunt?" he asked casually as Liara also sat.

"Now I gather information, peel away layers of lies, and shine light into the shadows," Liara said. It was all very poetic, and Adrian was moments away from asking for clarification when she followed it up with, "And when I find the Shadow Broker, I hit him with a biotic field so strong that what's left of his body will fit into a coffee cup."

Adrian blinked, and as he looked around at Garrus and Tali, he could see from the way Tali cocked her head and Garrus' mandibles twitched that they were just as surprised. Liara's behaviour had been rather uncharacteristic of what he remembered of her since they'd reunited, but this was even more jarring, about as much as her threatening to flay people alive. What in the world had happened to make her so ruthless? As ever, the nature of life on Illium and the amount of time that had passed could explain some things, but certainly not everything. How had Liara reached this point?

He looked back at Liara, frowning slightly and subtly shifting himself away from her. "That anger can't be just from what you've told me," he said, his tone much more cautious than it had been previously. "What else happened between you and the Shadow Broker?"

Liara didn't sigh, but she did get up and move to look out the window. There was a pause, then she asked in turn, "Did Cerberus ever tell you how they recovered your body?"

Normally, Adrian would have snorted and asked why those bastards would have told him anything about such a matter, but in the context of this conversation, her question was out of left field. Again, he blinked and looked askance at her, wondering why she asked and what had happened. He could only guess. The Illusive Man had an information network to rival the Shadow Broker's—did that have something to do with it? But how?

She turned around to look at him again, and he shook his head.

"I gave it to them," she said. "I gave you to them, Shepard. Because they said they could rebuild you."

There was a moment in which the only sound was Tali's shocked, "What?" At that moment, Adrian didn't comprehend—and then he did perfectly, and his blood froze in his veins.

Cerberus. _Liara_ gave him to _Cerberus_.

"And to do that," she continued, "I had to take it from the Shadow Broker, who was going to sell your corpse to the Collectors."

Adrian barely heard that part, barely understood it at all. Even when he did, it didn't much matter. His mind was still stuck on the selling-him-to-Cerberus thing. Cerberus, the very same people who had wiped out his squad on Akuze, who had spent six years torturing poor Corporal Toombs, who had murdered Admiral Kahoku and his men, who had orchestrated all those atrocities in the Traverse two years ago, who had deliberately isolated him from his old friends and family so as to keep him dependent on them, who the woman who had wanted to put a control chip in his brain numbered among. Liara must have known of nearly all of that bar—maybe—the last part. And yet she had—

"Why didn't you tell me about this before now?" Adrian asked, and his voice was deathly quiet.

Liara seemed to look ashamed enough of herself, but it wasn't enough to quell the mounting fury inside his chest. "Because I screwed it up, Shepard," she said. "I barely escaped with my own life. And when I gave you to Cerberus, I told myself I was doing it for you, for a chance to bring you back. But I knew Cerberus would use you for their own business. And I let it happen." Here, he noticed that her eyes were wet, but it still wasn't enough. Nothing would have been enough. "Because I couldn't let you go. I'm sorry."

He shook his head. Her apology didn't matter. Maybe it should have, but it didn't. She'd _known_ what would happen, what Cerberus would do him, and yet she had gone through with it anyway. She'd known how much he had hated Cerberus—more than anything else in the galaxy save for slavers—and yet she had given him to them anyway. He felt…

God, he felt _violated_. He had felt violated since he had learnt who had brought him back and realised he was filled with Cerberus' tech and filth to the point that he had no way to know how much of him was still _him_. But that violation had been carried out by a hated enemy. This… this was even worse. Liara had loved him, or so she had claimed. She had been his first for everything, and he had given his heart to her in a way he had never dared, had been afraid of daring because of Mindoir and Akuze. He had trusted her absolutely; she had made him feel things he had either never felt before or not felt in years—and now he found that she had done _this_.

He was starting to glow, his overpowered biotics flaring out of control as they always did when he was truly angry, and his hand clenched into a fist as he got to his feet. "All this time," Adrian growled, low and harsh. "It wasn't your sources. You knowingly gave me to Cerberus. _You_ did this to me!"

Liara also rose to her feet. "And if I hadn't," she almost shouted, "you would have been dead! It was them or the Collectors. I made the best choice I could. I'm sorry. And now you know. And now you know why I have to destroy the Shadow Broker. For you and me."

Adrian's lip curled, and he turned away from her, shaking his head again. He caught Garrus' gaze; the way he was staring at Liara indicated that he was no more impressed than Adrian was. The case seemed to be the same for Tali. There was a long silence as Adrian struggled to get his biotics back under control, and then he started to speak.

"You've no idea, do you? You know, you could have buried my body after you rescued it. You could have given it to my _father_ for burial, to give him the closure he never got. But you—"

"Shepard, I—"

"—couldn't let me go," Adrian all but snarled. "And so you gave me to the same people who destroyed my squad on Akuze and tortured the only other survivor for six years and spent 2183 conducting all those sick experiments in the Traverse! Do you know that the woman who headed the Lazarus Project wanted to put a control chip in my brain and had to be specifically told _not_ to by the Illusive Man?" Tali let out another shocked gasp, and Garrus began to quickly explain to her in a hushed voice what had happened with Miranda. Adrian continued to focus on Liara, whose eyes were wide with shock.

"If that had happened," he continued, "I would have become Cerberus' _slave_ , and _you_ would have been partially responsible! But it's not just that. You gave me to Cerberus, Liara, _knowing_ what the consequences would be, knowing they would 'upgrade' me, 'improve' me, make me theirs in a way that I never wanted and can never escape from. My skin is filled with Cerberus' filth, and some days I just want to tear it right off! And that's on top of the existential crisis that comes from having been brought back from the dead!" His voice began to crack, and he had to pause to blink away the wetness in his eyes.

How many nights had Adrian spent awake, sleepless, not just wondering what it meant that he was back from the dead, the first person to truly be resurrected in recorded history, but hating every inch of his body for being touched by Cerberus? The same people who had massacred his squad at Akuze, and now they were inside him in a way that he could not escape from. Adrian had wanted to scream, to cry, to tear his own flesh from his bones—though they were sadly also filled with Cerberus 'upgrades'—to do _anything_ that would make him less helpless. But he could not. He was powerless to escape his body, and thanks to the Illusive Man, he was powerless to escape Cerberus, too. No matter how much he railed against them, no matter the fact that he was working on turning the crew against them, the Illusive Man had made sure he had nowhere else to turn and nowhere to run. And God, _God_ , did Adrian hate it. He had no words to describe how much he loathed it.

"You gave me to them knowing that they would manipulate me, use me, isolate me from all my friends, ruin my relationships, trap me in a corner, make sure that I had no-one else to turn to but them!" he continued, furious and hurt as he stared at Liara, wondering how she could have been so selfish as to even consider doing this to him. If she had truly loved him, she wouldn't have even thought about it, much less gone through with it. And that—that was worst of all. Adrian had so little as it was, thanks to Mindoir and Akuze and Cerberus and thanks to having lost two years of his life. He had wanted to cling on to what he'd had with Liara, but now _she_ had thrown it out the window.

"You knew how much I despised Cerberus, and still, you did it! _You did this to me!_ " Broken his trust, given him away like a piece of meat, almost got him turned into a slave, _violated_ him. And she didn't even have the excuse of two years having passed and changed her. No, this had been in her all along. The thought made Adrian sick and drove the fury and betrayal in him to new heights.

Liara was shaking her head. "You'd be dead otherwise!" she all but repeated, still almost shouting. "And I cared about you too much to let you go!"

"If you _cared_ about me, you wouldn't have given me to the people who helped ruin my life and are _continuing_ to ruin it!" Adrian snapped, drawing still further away from her. "Oh, I'm alive, but what am I now? A jumped-up piece of Cerberus tech, a convenient bludgeon for the Illusive Man to point in the right direction, isolated from my friends and family, made out to be a _traitor_ to the Alliance, to the Council, to my principles, to all that I had left after Mindoir and Akuze! Kaidan's rejected me! Corporal Toombs was once my best friend, and he threatened to _kill_ me if he ever saw me again! Cerberus did all that to me, and _you_ helped them do it! And all for your own selfish reasons— _you_ couldn't let me go! Not a word about our friends, or even worse, my _father_. Do you have any idea what my loss did to Dad? After everything that he'd already been through? You worked with him on the first _Normandy_ —you knew! And yet you spared not a _thought_ for him!"

His poor father, who had lost most of his family on Mindoir save for Adrian himself and those few who were back in England. His father, who had been taken as a slave, had a control chip planted in his head, and lived with it for six years before it had to be removed; who had spent seven more years as a slave before finally getting free; who had described life with the control chip to him as the worst kind of hell. His father, who had outlived his wife and two of his three children, who had reunited with him after over a decade only to outlive him too, who was _still_ dealing with the fallout from it all. And Liara hadn't even thought of him—or anyone other than herself, apparently.

Liara opened her mouth to respond, but at this moment, Garrus stood up and stepped forward to draw her attention to him. Briefly, Adrian was glad for it—he would have hated to hear whatever new excuse Liara would have come up with, if she didn't just repeat herself again. But his relief vanished when Garrus, who was looking hard at Liara, said, "Wait a minute. Liara… if you gave his body to Cerberus, then you knew… you knew _all along_." Disgust flooded his tone as he spoke.

There was a long, ugly silence.

"Two years, Liara," Garrus said finally. " _Two years._ All this time, and you could have _told_ someone. You could have told the Alliance, Kaidan— _anyone_. But you kept it to yourself. Why?"

Tali now also got to her feet and joined Garrus. Her fury was palpable even with her helmet in the way. "You—" she sputtered. "You selfish _bosh'tet_! Do you have any idea what you've _done_ , Liara? Not just to him, but to the rest of us, too! I know _I_ would have liked to have known that he was coming back! We all would! Maybe he wouldn't have had to work with Cerberus if the Alliance had known! But you're just so _set_ on getting your revenge that you never even _thought_ to tell anyone! You _bosh'tet_." Her voice climbed higher and higher as she spoke, then suddenly dropped down to a deadly whisper for the last two words, and she shook her head. She seemed to be glaring at Liara, and the part of Adrian that wasn't concentrated on the rising horror and sudden realisation that had come with these words thought that that glare should have burned right through her visor.

But it was only a small part, after all. Adrian stared between the three of them, his breath slow and heavy as the full implications of what Garrus and Tali had said settled in. As they did, he wondered why he hadn't seen it before. Liara had known. She had known all this time. And as if desiring to compound her initial crime by giving him to Cerberus for her own selfish reasons, she hadn't even bothered to _tell_ anyone. At once, Adrian saw everything that could have been different if she had done so, like a pattern that was laid out in his mind. His blood ran cold again, and then, for the second time, he began to glow as his biotics flared almost entirely out of his control and his rage and betrayal climbed up to greater heights yet.

He whipped around to stare at Liara. "You mean we could have avoided all this?" he said quietly, his voice trembling with his barely restrained anger. He was finding it difficult to keep himself from blasting a hole in the wall with his biotics—or throwing Liara through the window, horrible though that would have been. He continued, and his voice rose as he spoke. "You mean we could have avoided Horizon? Toombs threatening to kill me? Me being stuck with Cerberus? You mean we could have thrown a spanner in the Illusive Man's plans? That I could have gone back to the Alliance? You mean that all of _this_ was for nothing? That everything Toombs and Kaidan went through was for _nothing_? _You mean that my father's grief was for absolutely nothing?!_ "

Two years of mourning the last of his surviving children, and for _what_? He of all people should have had the right to know that Cerberus was bringing him back; it would have given him something to hope and live for, dragged him out of the grief and despair he'd plunged into after the first _Normandy_ 's destruction. But Liara had either not thought to tell him, to tell anyone, or had deliberately chosen not to, and Adrian couldn't decide which of those possibilities was worse. Not that it truly mattered, he supposed. It had been for nothing. It all could have been avoided. As he realised this, Adrian shot far past trembling with fury and entered the realm of being _numb_ with it.

Slowly, very slowly, Liara nodded. She could not meet his gaze, and a blush faintly coloured her cheeks, and her shoulders were hunched, but her obvious contrition was not enough. Nothing would ever be enough. She had done this to him, and then she had had the nerve to not even bother to tell anyone what she had done. She had helped trap him with Cerberus twice over. Loved her he might have, but how could Adrian forgive that? He was in the habit of saving people and giving them second chances, oh yes; it was what he'd dedicated his life to. But forgiveness was not his forte.

"Dammit, Liara," he growled, and there was as much hurt and resignation as there was anger in his voice. "Everything that's happened—we could have _avoided_ all this if you'd just! Told! Someone! We could have, but we didn't! Because of you and your selfishness!"

"Shepard, I—"

He couldn't hear any more from her. He _wouldn't_ hear any more from her. "No," he said shortly. "This—this is too much. You _used_ me. You did all this to me. To me, to our friends, to my father. You—I can't—damn you. Just— _damn you_."

With that, before Liara could say another word, he turned and walked out, Garrus and Tali following silently behind him. He would feel it later, the grief and the betrayal and the ire, but for now, the numbness that he was all too familiar with was all there was, all that there could be.


End file.
